Border Crossing Blog

Freedom/Свобода

I got into a big debate in one of my classes about freedom with my students--and the contrast between personal freedom in Russia and the United States. Many of my students felt that the the were more personally free than in the United States. After all, they can go to the bar any time of they like. There are no regulations about where you can drink or smoke.

They also see the difference between now and Soviet times as night and day-- and they really appreciate it. One of my students, who lives with his girlfriend, said that he really values his freedom because under Communism it would have been impossible for him to live with a woman he wasn't married to. In Soviet times, you had to have a special stamp in your passport that said you were married. Otherwise you could forget about living together. I think it is those little things about daily life in the former USSR that we in the West never really understood.

The biggest barrier to personal freedom still remaining, many felt, was obligatory military service. My students felt this even though the endemic corruption about who has to serve is way worse than it was during the Vietnam war when mainly poor undereducated minorities were sent to the front line.
Of course, none of my Muscovite students had served more than two weeks through either having powerful parents, paying bribes, or through educational deferral, which supposedly makes you an officer.

On the other hand, my students are upwardly mobile people who enjoy there freedom. Of course a large percentage or Russians, rural and often desperately poor, don't know how to respond to this freedom or don't have the resources to use it. Posted by Aaron at March 11, 2004 12:59 PM